How games change in the daily league

What is on the slate today

Nine competitive boards go up at the London reset: Five Letters, Equation, Lattice and Colour Code, which are untimed and judged on how few guesses or swaps you need, and Pipes, Bridges, Sun & Moon, Blooms and Trail, which are timed and judged on how fast you finish.

The whole set is worth up to 90 points a day, because each board pays at most 10 to whoever tops its field. It was 80 until 14 September, when the slate went from eight games to nine.

The vote is two questions and one answer per person

When a cycle is open, the poll appears by itself the next time you open the site while signed in. You do not have to go looking for it, and it will not block anything: close it and the app carries on.

The first question asks which daily game you would remove. Every current daily game is a button, and below them sit two more: Keep all current games, which is a real option and can win outright, and No preference, which records that you do not mind rather than forcing a vote you do not hold.

The second question asks what you would add instead. The list is drawn from the games playable outside the league, each with a one-line description of what it is, and it ends with Add none, No preference, and a box for suggesting a puzzle that is not on the list at all, up to 160 characters.

One answer per account per cycle. Once you submit, that response is fixed until the next cycle opens, so read the second list before you choose. Test accounts are excluded, which is why the tally is a count of real members.

What the last vote decided

The most recent cycle closed on 14 September with 24 responses from members. Keep all current games led the removal question with 5 votes, so nothing was taken away. Colour Code led the addition question with 4, with Light Up next on 3.

Those two results together are why the league now has nine games rather than a straight swap. Colour Code rejoined the same day, and the board it had already set that Monday carried into the competitive standings rather than being thrown away and regenerated. Dates before that Monday keep their original eight-game scope.

There is a short note about it on Today. When a new cycle opens, the poll will appear the same way the last one did.

Four changes so far

Each change takes effect at the midnight Europe/London reset, never mid-day, so nobody loses a board they have started.

• 26 July: Colour Code out, Bridges in.
• 5 August: Cross Sums out, Lattice in.
• 21 August: Mini Sudoku out, Pipes in.
• 14 September: nothing out, Colour Code back in as the ninth.

What a rotation changes

From the change date, the incoming game sets a competitive board every day and the outgoing one stops. The day's scoring slots move with it, which is why a perfect day is now worth 90 points rather than 80.

In the Library, a game that leaves the league moves out of League practice and into the Puzzle Gallery. It is the same game with the same boards; it has simply stopped being scored. Cross Sums and Mini Sudoku are both there now, and both still run a dated Just for fun board.

Full-day achievements follow the date's own catalogue. A day where you finished all eight, back when eight was the whole slate, is still a full day and still counts. A full day today needs all nine.

What a rotation never touches

Points you have already earned stay earned. A rotated-out game keeps every score it ever produced, and those points keep counting towards your all-time average exactly as they did the day you won them.

The Board reflects that. Open a date from July and you will still see the Colour Code column on it, because the standings for a day are built from the games that actually ran on that day, not from today's list. The day a game rotates out, yesterday's board still shows its column.

Averages are worked out against what was available on each date you entered, so an eight-game August day is compared with eight games and a nine-game September day with nine. Adding a ninth game does not quietly dilute your record.

And the game itself does not disappear. It stays in the Library at every difficulty, it keeps its Just for fun board, and it can rotate back in later. Colour Code is the proof of that: out on 26 July, back on 14 September.

What you cannot do

You cannot change the slate for yourself. It is one shared league, so everybody plays the same nine boards on the same day, and that is what makes a placement mean anything. The vote is the only lever, it is collective, and it only opens when a cycle is running.

If a game is not in the league and you want to play it anyway, that is what the Library and For You are for. Neither pays league points, and neither needs the rotation to change first.

If the poll never appeared for you, the likely reason is that no cycle is open right now. The last one closed on 14 September.